


Out of the Badlands

by Cara_Loup



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 21:18:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1579862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cara_Loup/pseuds/Cara_Loup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after the war, Leia returns to Tatooine in search of her father’s origins and faces a most unexpected encounter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Badlands

Leia Organa stopped her rented landspeeder in the middle of emptiness. An airy silence breathed around her, and high above the flats, a winged lizard turned crazy circles. _Sunrider_ , she decided after a moment, an elusive creature that belonged to Luke’s stories about his childhood. Leia inhaled deeply as she leaned back in her seat.

Mos Eisley had loosened a murky flood of recollection ― of wending through crowded back alleys in a bounty hunter’s heavily padded outfit, of the nervous excitement that coursed wildly beneath her poise and the seductive taste of adventure. Two years ago, when they’d plotted a bizarre rescue operation between three humans, two droids and a Wookiee, she’d felt gripped by a process of transformation like the gateway into a new life. But a bounty hunter’s garb bore little resemblance to a dayfly’s chrysalis, and a life’s work couldn’t be shed like restrictive clothes.

Well. Leia’s fingers toyed with the steering lever. She _had_ started a new life, if not along the lines she’d envisioned then, and the shapeless sense of expectation had crystallized into ambitious projects. If she felt weary sometimes, the demands of her office and the delicate political balance more than explained it. The New Republic was still a hybrid construct, compounded from solid achievements and motley aspirations battling for supremacy.

She glanced around, across the silvery flats that stretched in every direction and defined level horizons. The binary’s glare brought out a fierce glint in the flaky salt crust, contested by brown splodges of hard-packed loam.

 _Is this what you wanted me to see, Luke?_ she thought with a trace of sarcasm. _How empty your life was before you discovered the Force?_ But these parts lay far from the gentle roll of dunes and the rocky mesas where Luke had grown up, amidst shades of copper and rust and burnished ochre. Here, no memories assailed her with figments of possible lives and unrealized opportunities.

 _You’re far too young for a mid-life crisis, Organa_. Leia shook her head and brushed loose strands out of her face before they could stick to her skin. Over the film of lavishly applied skin protection beaded perspiration. The barren heat closed around her like a glass furnace.

 _What if I’d been the one General Kenobi took away to watch over, to protect and guide―?_ Annoyance flickered on the heels of that thought. Faced with these dry wastes and the desolation etched into every rock, it was neither fair nor sensible to envy Luke his freedom, his abilities, or the guidance he’d received ― especially when she wanted no part in those explosive gifts.

 _That’s enough_. She reached for the ignition as a flock of incompatible sentiments threatened to tear away from rational restraint. Mos Espa was still many miles away, and the twin suns had already started their decline into the bleak west.

A few moments later, the landspeeder streaked across the transparent distance, angled towards the hazy outline of brown sedimentary crags.

* * *

Leia felt at once grimy and elated when she reached the settlement after a brisk race against nightfall. In the radiant hues of dusk, the domes and sand-caked roofs of adobe dwellings acquired the look of a secluded oasis, sheltering tiny lights that swayed in the evening breeze. The lazy purr of vaporators and occasional cackles from pet kai-kais wound up into the cooling air, twining with the harsh alkali scents from the desert.

 _It was here_ , Leia thought with a sudden stab of something that wasn’t quite alarm. _Here_...

Though most of the records had been lost or destroyed, the vandalized Temple archives on Coruscant had yielded up a file reporting the Jedi Council’s assessment of a nine-year old boy, citizen of Tatooine and recently freed slave. His enormous potential couldn’t be linked to any of the known Force-gifted family lines. The boy was a disconcerting accident, a freak, and misgivings surrounded him, a shadow spun out of weighty prophecies and counter-prophecies. Like Luke, he’d grown up far from the wealth and sophistication of the galactic Core, raised in the wasteland of sand and sky, in the poorer quarters of a shabby settlement.

Leia hesitated as she slowed her vehicle. She should start looking for lodgings, or ― if there was no such thing among the decrepit structures and storm-flayed generator stations ― for a family home where a well-paying guest would be welcome.

 _Later_ , she resolved with an appraising glance at the vanishing suns. She had at least another hour before aggressive nocturnal cold would set in.

A mechanic at the local garage gave her directions to the old slave quarters. While he ogled her with unabashed curiosity, Leia caught no spark of recognition in his eyes. In all likelihood, the man took her for a wealthy and eccentric tourist. Only a handful of select friends knew where she’d gone; officially, Minister Organa had left Coruscant for a vacation at an unnamed resort. After so many months spent in the company of functionaries, diplomats and droids, anonymity and isolation tasted of luxury.

Humming to herself, Leia steered the ‘speeder to the derelict fringes of Mos Espa. Before she climbed from the vehicle, she wrapped a shawl around her head and shoulders against the evening chill.

Evidently, the former slave quarters had been abandoned to decay and erosion years ago. More than half the narrow structures had caved in, their crumbling walls overblown by drifts of fine sand. Afloat in the deep blue stillness of dusk, the ruins resembled a city sunk to the bottom of the sea. Leia walked around with a detached kind of curiosity, noting that all the dwellings that remained halfway intact had been scavenged for usable materials. Even doors and shutters had disappeared; sand piled up inside the yawning kitchens and storage rooms. From one of the dark cavities, a pair of luminous eyes blinked at her, and she moved on quietly.

When she rounded the next corner, she could see her parked ‘speeder again, a squat shape in the lowering gloom. The house in front of her still possessed a sturdy door of sand-blasted metal. Leia raised a hand to the rough surface and felt residual warmth against her palm.

Anakin Skywalker had grown up in a house like this, alone with his mother and his unexplained abilities, but the knowledge remained abstract. Impossible, to picture the fair-haired boy he must have been, to attach innocence and a child’s fears to the name. If he’d stayed here, undiscovered and untempted, the course of history would have been altered, but her imagination veered from unraveling the countless factors and contingencies that structured her reality.

 _I wouldn’t exist, much less be here tonight_. In reflex, Leia’s hand pressed harder against the sun-warmed metal ― and she almost flinched at the sudden movement. The door swung back into unrelieved darkness. Patting her blaster with one hand, Leia unhooked the glowtorch from her belt with the other and stepped inside.

The focused white beam slid across bare walls and a thick layer of dust on the floor. Empty sockets recalled the location of kitchen appliances and air filters, but not a scrap of wire or insulation remained. The local scavengers were nothing if not thorough.

A sweep to the far side of the room caught narrow stairs in the harsh light, but the top lay buried under sandy rubble. A thin draft touched Leia’s face as she looked around. Ten square meters of living space for an entire family who’d vanished without a trace, filled up by the persistent silence of the desert.

In the blink of an eye, she’d made her decision to spend the night here, alone, in a forgotten recess that belonged entirely to the past. Leia returned to the landspeeder in long strides and scooped up the bedroll and thermoblanket from the back seat. Like a runaway, she’d packed only sensible clothing and the survival gear she’d kept stashed in a closet since the war’s termination. Bedroll jammed under one arm, she activated the alarm system to protect her vehicle against jawas and nocturnal marauders.

She was humming again by the time she returned into the empty kitchen, an entirely different set of memories hovering at the edge of her thoughts as she bolted the door. Across a gap of many years, recollection teased her with the morning scents of Alderaan and the heart-pounding excitement of creeping away from her father’s villa before the household droids had completed their recharging cycles. She’d been an accomplished runaway, but she’d always returned of her own accord.

Leia spread the thermoblanket across the downy dust on the floor, placed the bedroll on top of it, and sat down to nibble at a nutristick from her pouch. The first time she’d run, shortly after her mother’s death, guards had caught up with her before she’d even reached the far side of the park, but she’d perfected her skills over the years. She took a sip from the canteen while worried faces paraded past ― her nannies, her father, her bodyguards ― each face sliding up beneath a thin crust of years, floating under ice.

She pulled the clips from her hair and let the long braids spill loose across her shoulders. Maybe she’d run only to look at her home from a distance, the smooth shine slanting from arched windows into the garden. To memorize a return path while she breathed the scent of waterlilies and pearlbrush, curled up inside a hedge. And each homecoming trapped her in an ambivalent swell of pleasure and remorse when Bail Organa folded her in a hug that buried her face in the soft cloth of his tunic. _My precious child_... He’d never asked for reasons when she came back hungry, scratched and tired.

Leia stretched out on her back and switched off the glowtorch, inviting darkness that fell like a fuzzy old blanket. Here she was lying in the disowned cache of somebody else’s past, safely anonymous, grief tight in her chest. All her regrets were for Alderaan, not for missed opportunities and discarded dreams. Certainly not for Anakin.

Triggered by the thought, her mind circled back, reiterating a conversation with Luke that recurred at almost regular intervals.

The last time they’d met, Luke had changed again, power and confidence simmering closer to the surface, though carefully understated. As he talked, Leia studied him closely. He looked younger, but the vibrancy in him owed little to the recently acquired tan; it seemed to radiate from the way he carried himself. She understood then that he’d made his peace with the past and balanced his burdens with a new, easy assurance that opened him towards a chosen future. It was that sense of liberation that he wanted to share with her.

_I understand how difficult it is for you, Leia, and you don’t have to choose the Jedi way, but you can’t ignore your own potential forever. You have the Force..._

_It’s not a legacy I wish to claim_ , she’d returned like so many times before, her words sounding stilted and uncertain to her own ears.

_He was your father too._

_I_ had _a father. I don’t need another one_.

A guarded look stole into Luke’s eyes, and she caught a glimpse of the shields that locked constant strain and indelible scars from view. _Don’t you even want to know?_

When she’d failed to answer, his hands wrapped around hers without pressure, and there was something of Bail Organa’s gentleness in his touch. Love, acceptance, and unspoken guilt. _I want you to be happy, Leia. And you’ll never be that if you can’t be yourself_.

Arrogance, she’d wanted to snap at him during one moment of unchecked frustration. Yet nothing she could say would convince her brother.

Luke believed that she’d smothered something inside herself, and that leaving the past untouched would raise a consuming shadow instead of curing old injuries. Sometimes, when she lay awake at night, she wondered if he was right.

Leia pulled up the bedroll’s zippers and listened to the wind’s muted rustle across the sand drifts. Something about this place promised protection, the space around her just wide enough to shelter her lengthening breaths. Here, where she was alone, with no obligations except to herself, sleep came easy, like a slender hand passing across her lids.

* * *

Leia woke with a start of alarm, to the presence of a stranger in the house she didn’t recognize. For several moments, she lay flat on her back and listened to her shaky breaths while she stared hard at the shadows.

As her eyes adjusted, the dimness cleared. A vague gray shine hovered in the room; she must have slept longer than she’d thought, if dawn was already breaking. Against the sand-blinded rectangle of a window, a silhouette appeared for a moment, then slipped into a lightless corner, though no footsteps broke the silence.

Careful not to stir up a treacherous rustle, Leia slid a hand towards her blaster, but the intruder seemed unaware of her presence. At the center of the room, the evasive figure gained definite contours and resolved into the silhouette of a lithe woman. Arms wrapped around herself, she paced two steps, then paused, her head lowered.

She wore the loose, dusty garb of hired laborers, but something in her posture belonged to a different kind of life. A pronounced straightness to her spine that made her look taller than she was, the wiry resilience and precision in her movements.

Leia recalled bolting the door from within when she suddenly felt the stranger’s eyes on herself. A piercing shiver ran through her, but the gloom seemed to lighten and revealed the woman’s face. Regular features, too earthy and lined to be considered beautiful, framed by dark braids. She shook her head, chin lifting. "You won’t find him here."

Startled in a way that scattered her earlier alarm, Leia sat up. "Find who?"

Her fingertips kept contact with the blaster’s cool metal grip, a link to solid reality more than a reassurance.

"Anakin."

Leia inhaled sharply, a chill traveling up her backbone while a hollow seemed to open in the middle of her mind. She’d never heard the name spoken with such softness, shaped by the weight of sorrow and recollection. A subtle, profound change had come over the woman’s expression, but her gaze didn’t falter.

"You’re his mother," Leia breathed. "Anakin’s mother."

The sudden knowledge and the woman’s presence took on the dizzying quality of a dream.

"Yes," the stranger confirmed with a small, insubstantial smile. The set of her shoulders eased, and she raised a hand to brush some trailing strands away from her forehead. Waiting, with infinite patience, for some display of shock, for disbelief or questions.

 _This isn’t real_ , Leia thought, relief coursing through her. The spurious lighting, the unnatural clarity of her perceptions that decoded sentiment and intention without effort ― as if she’d spent years in this woman’s presence ― nothing of it was real.

But who was this woman? A guardian angel summoned by unadmitted anxieties? Her own conscience personified, compounded from speculation about her ancestors and the people she’d met on Tatooine? Leia wondered briefly at her own clinical detachment in the middle of a vivid dream. If she needed further evidence, her own calm provided it. But the image in front of her didn’t waver, and the woman was still waiting for a reaction.

 _Now that we’re both here_ , Leia thought whimsically, _we might as well have a civil conversation_.

"We found the records of Anakin’s testing at the Temple," she said, "but they never mentioned your name..."

"Shmi." The woman cocked her head.

"And I’m―"

"Leia. I know."

Of course she knew. Leia came close to shaking her head at herself. She had to keep a grip on her reasoning amidst all these discordant impressions.

"My granddaughter," Shmi continued pensively. "Anakin’s daughter. But he never knew you, did he?"

Although it made no sense, Leia hid her reaction, the quick start that passed through her with resentment and a tingle of alarm. Inside a detention cell sized like a coffin, Vader had probed her mind with all means available to him, but she’d resisted, curled up as if dead in a far corner of her self.

"No," she said curtly. "He never knew me."

If she’d expected further questions and curiosity, she was wrong. Shmi studied her with a wistful kind of sympathy that seemed to charge the distance between them until Leia grew uncomfortable. She straightened, peeled the bedding off herself, and stopped again when she noticed the nervous tension in her own movements. Cooler air snaked down her throat, and she tugged the sleeves of her thermal undershirt up across her wrists.

Shmi stepped back to the window, conceding space for privacy. "And... have you become a Jedi?"

Brief hesitation severed the words, as if the concept was couched in awe more than comprehension.

Leia stifled a sigh. She should have expected that particular query, planted firmly at the back of her head by Luke’s insistence and her own inability to discount an option once it had crystallized. "You had a son with an incredibly strong talent," she evaded the question. "But what about you? He must have inherited it from you."

"I’d like to think that I gave him more than this inheritance."

"But you must have felt it," Leia insisted and realized within a moment that she was echoing Luke’s words to her. "The Force..."

Dark eyes grew distant as Shmi turned her face aside, listening for some lost strain amidst the whispers of sand that shifted in the night-wind. "Yes, I think so."

"Then why were you never trained?" 

"It was never offered to me." No hint of resentment tinged Shmi’s voice as she dismissed the possibility. "The Jedi who took my son with him was... startled. He assumed, I think, that Anakin had it from his father."

Something close to amusement seemed to enter her tone as she reviewed younger days across a margin of decades. Leia shook her head. "I can’t believe it that they simply left you behind."

"I wanted a future for my son. I was not important."

 _Not important for the Jedi? For Anakin or yourself?_ Leia wanted to ask. That much mild acceptance raised her hackles.

"I wasn’t raised to lead." Unquestionably, a wry irony tugged at Shmi’s mouth this time. "I was brought up to accept and to serve. But you’re different." Once again, Leia found herself caught in the candid directness of those dark eyes.

"You don’t have any children of your own," Shmi finished.

"I’m barely twenty-five," Leia returned automatically, and with part of her mind wondered why she was offering explanations to a figment from her own unconscious. There was no reason to be surprised at Shmi’s intimate knowledge of her. "We’ve finally won the war, and a true chance for peace that will last." She gestured comprehensively. "There’s still a lot of time, and I’ve waited so long for this..."

"Because you were raised for it?"

"It’s what I want," Leia retorted sharply. "To give shape to freedom and restore the Republic. You don’t know what it’s like ― to see worlds heal, cultures revive and flourish after so many years of suppression. To know what it takes and have the means to effect change and progress."

"Perhaps I don’t." Shmi tilted her head, her expression softening towards apology.

Something about her lenience and the skepticism it seemed to camouflage piqued Leia’s temper. "But you think there’s something wrong if a woman prefers political responsibility over starting a family?" she challenged. "Because every woman is born to be a mother?"

"Leia..." The clarity of Shmi’s voice cut through her annoyance with simple affection. "No. And I’m not here to judge you." She paused, pressing the tips of her fingers together. "Anakin was born late. For the longest time, I didn’t think I would have a child..."

"I’m sorry," Leia muttered. "I’m overreacting. It gets difficult sometimes, to live with all those expectations."

"Yes, I know." The other woman smiled diffidently. "That at least I know. There are many questions when a woman raises a fatherless child. But poverty allows for greater tolerance sometimes. I worked hard to raise him, and perhaps that made it easier to accept."

"Easier to accept?" Leia echoed. "You make it sound as if it was your fault ― and your responsibility to make people feel comfortable around him."

"I thought it was." A series of reactions played over Shmi’s features, from regret to reminiscence and back to sober acceptance. Leia watched, fascinated by Shmi’s expressive face that suddenly reminded her of Luke although there was no physical likeness. She knew almost nothing about this woman’s life, the hardships, joys and losses, and she certainly didn’t have the right to question Shmi’s choices.

"If I had a child now," Leia resumed her earlier reasoning with lesser discomfort, "I wouldn’t be able to give enough. The time and attention a child needs. Maybe that will change eventually. Maybe there’ll be a time when I want to have children..."

"But you’re not sure that time will ever come."

"No," Leia said softly. "I’m not sure, and it’s possible that I’m only making excuses."

Shmi’s glance lowered, but what looked like a bashful gesture was a courtesy extended to her most volatile sentiments. "You’re afraid."

"How could I not be?"

Yet she’d never thought of it that way before. Children were so far in her future that it seemed pointless to speculate about their legacy. A multitude of factors must have led Anakin to the Dark Side, his choices were his own, and Luke kept telling her that nothing was passed on except raw potential ― but a different answer slipped almost before Leia knew. "He killed so many, destroyed so much. And he took so much from Luke, too."

Here, in the desert of Tatooine, the memory lived close. After Bespin, the scorched wastes had become Luke’s refuge.

She’d hardly recognized him when they met again in Mos Eisley, after months of separation, to discuss final arrangements. The new, guarded look in his eyes, the haunted strength that surrounded him like an impenetrable barrier. If a part of him still mourned lost innocence, the jagged edges of despair had long turned inward. Although Luke maintained a carefully controlled balance, she’d been able to sense the twisting unrest within him. The tortured isolation in which he continued to live for so long after the war, wrestling with memories and his obligations to the Force, while the first flush of victory settled into steady, concentrated efforts to rebuild.

She’d never questioned Luke’s ability to love, but in retrospect, she knew it was letting himself be loved that made the difference ― impossible for Vader’s son, an outcast because of his legacy as much as his powers. The healing had taken a long time, and eventually came in the most unexpected shape.

"There were times when I just couldn’t stand it anymore," Leia said, pulling words from the tide of recollection. "All the losses, the scars. That was the worst... That he could do this to his own son. Luke deserved so much more."

"What about you?" Shmi asked. "What did he do to you?"

"He made me watch. He showed me my helplessness and my fear... and how easy it would be, to abuse that much power." Leia heard the tightness in her own voice and inhaled slowly. Again, her answer had come without thought, passing over the claustrophobic memory of the Death Star ― as if there was any point in concealing something from a shadow within a dream. But Shmi’s presence had become disturbingly real over the past minutes... Leia didn’t want to examine that notion any further.

"Tell me about it. The life you lead." Shmi pulled up her shoulders, a gesture that seemed gawky and vulnerable. "It must be very difficult for you to make a choice. You have so much to consider."

"And I tend to get bogged down in considerations, because I want to do everything at once and better than anyone else," Leia returned caustically. In another instant, she got to her feet, suddenly needing to move. "Mon Mothma wants me to be her successor, Luke thinks I should begin Jedi training..."

She was talking to Shmi as though to herself and couldn’t begin to explain all the complications involved in her chosen responsibilities.

Leia turned sideways and watched a low tide of daylight creep up the wall. She’d never been entirely sure what Han had wanted her to be ― if he’d even known it himself. Now that she thought about it, she wondered if his fantasies had featured her as a gun-toting queen of the spacelanes. Unquestionably, his perception of her had had little in common with everybody else’s ideas about Bail Organa’s daughter. And that, she’d realized, had accounted for much of the attraction. Perhaps it was unfair to reduce something far more complex to a single facet, but Han had given her a chance to break with the restrictive pattern.

 _And you never followed up on it_ , Leia told herself with unsparing candor. _Not in any way that mattered_.

Far easier to explain what the man she’d always consider her father had intended for her, and startling to realize just to what an extent she had come to conform to that carefully appointed role. Tenaciously arguing her case in the Council, diplomatic and occasionally glamorous at state functions, successful at the most difficult negotiations. _Father would be proud of you_. A mantra she’d repeated to herself for the better part of her adult life.

Leia slid away from those musings as if stepping out of an elaborate garment. "I have no idea what Vader would have wanted for me. Luke says he didn’t realize who I was until the very end."

 _What Anakin would have wanted_... She listened after the thought.

"I don’t know that either." Shmi’s voice had sunk to a hoarse murmur, and the note of anguish drew Leia’s eyes back to her. _Vader_ ― she’d called him Vader ― but before she could think of anything to correct that slip, Shmi continued.

"I encouraged him... I had no proper knowledge of the Force, but I encouraged him to explore without feeling guilty about his... abilities. He was a slave. The Force, and the things he could feel in himself, gave him a sense of freedom..." She trailed off and wrapped a loose strand around her fingers. "I wonder sometimes how much would have been different, if I’d kept him here, in ignorance."

Leia shook her head. "How could you?"

Luke had been raised in such ignorance, his gifts and sensitivities denied, desires clipped to fit the format of moisture farming. Trained late and briefly, to be the old order’s unlikely weapon against their arch enemy. Leia didn’t think there was a day when her brother didn’t regret all those missed chances.

She closed her eyes and listened to the rustle of sand in a breeze that lifted from the east, the first precursor of morning. Like torn silk, the fine grains slid over weather-beaten stone and clay, and within the folds of that soft sound, scattered words assembled to whisper through her mind. A memory burst on her like a dry seed capsule tossed about in an autumn wind. Yet the voices she heard didn’t speak up from the sealed well of her own past.

_Will I see you again?_

The voice of a child, struggling with tears.

 _What does your heart tell you?_ Shmi asked back.

Instead of offering easy comfort with a vacant half-truth, she’d let her son move out of her life. Confronting solitude, her own choice, a necessity, and a duty to love as she perceived it. To let go and accept isolation...

Perhaps that was the real, the only Skywalker legacy.

 _Sometimes I hold on too hard_... Leia breathed deeply and raised her head, fleeting thoughts for Luke, for Alderaan, for the boy who’d grown up on the desert’s edge enveloping her like a threadbare cloak, then slipping aside. Her eyes burned when she looked at the other woman again.

"I’ll never know if I made the right decision," Shmi said in a drifting tone. "All I know is why I made it."

On a liberating rush of emotion, Leia wanted to embrace her, but the pale glow of dawn fell across the other woman’s frame and shimmered through her. A vision, then, or a manifestation through the Force. Comprehension had stolen into her mind and no longer disturbed her when it surfaced as conscious thought.

"You’re real."

Shmi tilted her head and returned only a bemused look, gentle laughter sparking in her eyes.

In the silence that lay around them, Leia could feel an immense, unfocused energy. Brilliant, waiting, weaving the counter-currents of time into a complex tapestry. The air was almost electric against her skin.

 _But I’m not that strong in the Force_ , she thought at once. Had Luke brought her here? Had Anakin or Kenobi, or was it the Force itself that shifted layers of time so that they overlapped―?

Leia caught back the thoughts before she could trap herself once more in their habitual patterns.

Maybe Shmi had been that strong. Maybe she could be, too.

"Thank you," Leia said softly.

The light strengthened, and when she raised a hand to touch the other woman’s shoulder, a fine ripple passed through her outstretched fingers. And she was alone again.

 _Don’t go_. Her throat closed up around the words. Leia wrapped her arms around herself, regretting all the questions she hadn’t asked, all the years she hadn’t spent with her mother, her grandmother... _Maybe someday_ , the thought feathered across her mind, but whether it was her own she couldn’t tell. _Maybe someday we’ll meet again_.

Some minutes later, she stepped out into a radiant morning, swept clear by cobalt blue winds. Beside the house, sand had piled up, a drift that curved away gently like a woman’s shoulder. Leia crouched down to touch the incredibly fine grains and let them run through her fingers. _What happened to you? What did you do after you gave up your son?_

Now that she had a name, she could look for further information ― if Shmi’s steps had left any tracks in written records. She couldn’t wait to join Luke and tell him.

_Will I see you again?_

Leia straightened out and felt the wind’s touch on her face. She had all the time in the world.

* * * * *

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2000, after the release of _Star Wars – The Phantom Menace_ ; first published in IMPERIUM 8.


End file.
